


All A Matter of Trust

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Johnny and Dora [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Jokes, Late Night Conversations, Late at Night, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 10:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6370702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy thinks about how she reacted to the same silly joke very differently in two situations. It's all a matter of trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All A Matter of Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Brooklyn 99's not mine but I love these guys. I've also loved really researching Brooklyn landmarks to write this stuff and kind of REALLY want a Bruno Sammartino from Lioni's Italian Heroes.

Teddy Wells is a great guy--a super, duper awesome one, in fact--and even better cop. He's earnest, honest and friendly in the way that the big, boisterous golden retriever that was your favorite dog when you were a kid was. His surprisingly gigantic head holds more knowledge about traffic laws, police procedure and ten-codes than can be easily fathomed and Amy Santiago, as a bona-fide nerd for anything to do with the academic or administrative sides of law enforcement, can fathom a whole hell of a lot in that direction.

He helps old ladies cross the street, never refuses a panhandler and will hold a door for literally anyone without expecting even a thank you in return. Rosa calls him either "the saint" or "annoying." Gina calls him "hey you," but that's because she's a gremlin. Amy calls him "my guy" and doesn't even get annoyed when all he'll talk about is freakin' Pilsner on and on into the night like it's Matisse's famed 1905 portrait of his wife, Amelie, La femme au chapeau.

They honestly seem like the kind of people who should be a couple. They are... well, to say that it's the quarterback dating the head cheerleader would kind of be a lie. But the captain of the math team dating the star academic decathlete? This seems a little bit more realistic, truthfully... and is in fact totally accurate to both of their high school resumes. But don't be a hater, Amy is always quick to remind everyone... those are totally legitimate sports, just like anything else, because you can earn a letter in them and get injured and everything because she definitely sprained her wrist with an old dinosaur adding machine from the eighties. Math team at the Brooklyn High School for the Arts? Was totally hardcore.

That's why it doesn't make any sense when she freaks out so badly over such a stupid little joke that he makes, one day, on a visit to the 99's detective squadroom.

It's just a joke. A stupid, bad joke. Way less intense than recruits in the academy play on each other every day (just ask any of Jake Peralta's classmates... any of them) or, you know, the ones that pretty much first-graders play on each other.

She's leaned over her desk, signing the last dotted line on a form in a way that is (she hopes) firm enough to be authoritative like a future precinct captain's should be but still loopy and swirly enough to stay cute and feminine. Two fingers dig into her ribs--it doesn't even feel like a gun, can't realistically feel like one--and hears what is obviously Teddy's voice growl, "Stick 'em up, copper."

Amy pretends that she's just so well trained that it takes over, here, and that's why she spins lighting fast, twists his wrist hard enough to nearly break it and slams him face first onto the desk. "Teddy," she says, "what the hell?" Her heart is racing, her face is flushed (she is so not blushing it's the stress shut up) because she was just literally almost shot (wonder what caliber your boyfriend's finger is, the little Gina that lives at the back of her brain chirps, but whatevs) and there have been so many cops killed in the line and off-duty lately that... well... maybe she's just a little bit on edge, okay?

She tells him as much later on when they're cuddled up on the couch. He's drinking a Pilsner, she's smoking a cigarette she shouldn't be and they're watching her Homicide: Life on the Street DVDs (God, Frank Pembleton is so cool... smart, tough, badass and debonair just like a young Raymond Holt must have been). He agrees that it was in poor taste, disrespectful to her, the 99, the NYPD and their colleagues that were shot for no reason other than that they happened to be wearing blue uniforms in the wrong places at the wrong times. She smiles and curls into his strong arm while smells of tobacco and Pilsner wrap around them like a blanket woven out of comforting bad habits. He is the best boyfriend, really, the kind of who can admit when he's wrong about something.

That's why it's funny, later on when she's listening to him snore beside her in bed--he's got a terribly deviated septum and needs to see an ENT about it, it's in her planner to tell him but she hasn't gotten around to it yet--that she thinks of another time she fell victim to the finger gun joke with very different results. Amy laces her fingers behind her head, deftly avoids scrunching her ponytail through years of practice, and thinks of that day at the counter in Lioni's on 15th Avenue.

It was totally different circumstances, sure, but they were actually way worse and if she didn't overreact to Teddy then, well... she had really, really underreacted this time. She and Jake had just finished taking statements after a particularly vicious 10-34-K at the corner of 15th and 77th. It was two men fighting with a ten-inch, ivory handled switch blade and ad hoc bludgeon made out of a tire iron over one's knock off Chanel handbag. It ended up being, as Jake put it, "An extra juicy one," and he had gotten plenty of it all over the front of his shirt and pants.

So now she leaned against the counter, thanked Sal for her Marie Rossi and Jake's Bruno Sammartino, and waited for him to get finished cleaning up and fooling around with the leftover guys from FDNY's EMS Station 40. She'd seen some pretty ugly stuff today, like an upper arm sliced open from shoulder to elbow deep enough to reveal lots of raw meat bright and red as the pepperoni on the Ernest Borgnine that the stocky construction worker beside her was eating but, well... Amy had seen worse and dove face first into a bucket of fried chicken. That's just the way life was. Now she just needed Jake to hurry up. She'd skipped breakfast and they'd gone on this call right before lunch. It was rumbling along towards supper and she still hadn't eaten a bite thanks to those two knuckleheads on their respective ways to the 99's holding cell and New York Methodist Hospital's emergency room. She felt hungry enough to eat an elephant seal but... it just isn't polite to start in on the street meat without your partner, like that, and Amy was raised the right way.

And then she felt it, pressed right up against her ribs. "Freeze, copper," someone said. The voice was deep, gruff enough to be menacing.

She rolled her eyes. "Ha ha, Jake," she said. "Now sit down and eat your sandwich. I'm starving."

He did. "You got me the Sammartino? Cool. Thanks."

"Yeah. It's got enough vegetables in it to pretend to be healthy, if you close your eyes and squint, but they're all deep fried so you should still be pretty happy."

He grinned. "I am, trust me. And thankful that those Station 40 goons had at least one clean t-shirt without an FDNY logo on it for me to change into."

She took a bite of her Rossi and grimaced. "Your shirt's a total loss?"

"Yeah... it's a real shame. I've had it long enough that it feels like an old friend. I mean it's not, like, a good shirt that I'd wear to grandma's Passover seder or anything but... I'm used to it hanging around."

"Sort of like Hitchcock?"

"Sort of, yeah."

She plays the scene over and over in her mind, lying there in the dark and listening to Teddy snore. She hadn't twisted Jake's arm, or snapped at him... nothing like that. It was something sweet and simple, even in the chaos of a busy deli at lunchtime, just the interplay of two people who could hold each other's lives without the fear of either one dropping the load. It was all a matter of trust and that was worth more than all the Pilsner in the world.


End file.
